


You Got Me, If You Want Me (It's Right Where I Should Be)

by odetosleepwalkers (pagodacom)



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Highschool AU, M/M, Strangers to Lovers, honestly i have no idea what this is going to wind up being, probably weed and alcohol at some point
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-08
Updated: 2016-08-21
Packaged: 2018-08-07 13:43:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7717129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pagodacom/pseuds/odetosleepwalkers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tyler Joseph is a slightly socially inept eleventh grader who is just tried of moving so much. Josh Dun is slightly more socially ept but doesn't really know what he's doing with his life and just wants someone to hold at night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Have You Ever Been Alone In A Crowded Room?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have honestly no idea what this fic is or where it is going. i literally just wrote this in like 45 minutes while sitting on my bed in the dark because the internet wasn't working and i had nothing better to do.   
> _anyways..._   
>  fic title is from you got me by taking back sunday   
> chapter title is from dark blue by jack's mannequin

Tyler tentatively walked through the hallways of his new school, textbooks and notebooks clutched tightly to his chest as his scanned the placards next to each door proudly declaring what number was assigned to each classroom. First period has just finished (English) and he was headed off to his second period class (chemistry.) As the small boy walked through the hallway, small crowds parted for him to walk through, some curious stares sent his way. This was a rather small school and the arrival of new students was highly anticipated. 

Tyler’s dad worked for a rather large company and was sent around the United States with his family every few years so that his father could coach a new branch of the company how to set up and gain revenue. Because of this, Tyler was unfortunately very used to being the new kid. Some schools were better and accepted new students more than others. The public schools in larger cities tended to be better, with the children of semi-wealthy businessmen being shuffled in and out on a semi-regular basis, mixed in with kids who had been living there their entire lives. It was the smaller towns were the problems tended to lie. In small towns, everyone knew everyone else, and any disruption to the norm sent ripples through the town. Many of the kids attending Tyler’s new school had never encountered a new student before, and no one knew what to make of him. Because he moved so much, Tyler was relatively used to this treatment, but that still didn’t make it any less nerve wracking whenever the time to enter a school came up again. 

His dad’s most recent assignment had placed him in a small suburb of Columbus, Ohio. With his family being somewhat religious they made the decision to send him and all three of his siblings to the nearby christian school: Worthington High. This was the first time that Tyler had ever gone to a private school. In all of their previous locations, there had simply been not enough money to send all four children to private school, but Tyler’s father had been given an exceptionally good salary this time around and him and his wife decided to splurge a little and take the leap to apply all four of them to Worthington High and the associated middle school: Worthington Junior High. (Tyler could tell right away that the school very much prided themselves on their ability to name their schools very creatively.) 

With going to a private school, there was a rather strict uniform that came along with it. Boys has to wear a blazer with the school’s (unnecessarily) fancy emblem sewn on the left breast, a white button down shirt tucked into gray slacks, and black dress shoes with white socks. The girl’s uniform was exactly the same except that they replaced gray slacks with a knee length gray skirt, white socks with white mid-calf length socks, and black dress shoes with black Mary Janes. The middle and elementary schoolers got off easy though with only having to wear a white polo shirt (with the school’s emblem sewn on,) khaki pants/shorts/skirts, and any shoes that even somewhat resembled being the color black. Tyler was secretly jealous of his littlest sister and brother for getting such a lax uniform in comparison to the one him and his other brother were forced into wearing. 

After walking through the eleventh grade hallway for roughly five minutes, Tyler found the room labeled 213 and walked through the door, his eyes immediately darted across the remaining empty seats. He was pleasantly surprised to find that about half of the room was unoccupied and promptly plopped himself on a desk next to the window and about halfway between the teacher’s desk and whiteboard at the front of the room and the opposite wall. Tyler considered himself lucky to be able to snatch a seat this good before someone else did. As they were on the second of the three floors of the school, the window provided a rather nice view of the american football field and surrounding forest off into the distance. 

Tyler found himself so entranced by looking at the patterns the trees made on the horizon that he barely noticed the ringing of the bell some minutes later, signifying the beginning of class.  
What he did notice, however, was the loud thump the stack of books carried by the teacher made against her desk as she walked into the room. She appeared to be in her late forties or early fifties, some off her hair starting to turn gray. 

“Welcome class, to a brand new year of learning!” The teacher declared cheerily, before turning to write her name on the whiteboard behind her, “My name is Mrs. Thompson and I hope you are as excited as me to be taking Chemistry II: The Periodic Table and Everything Surrounding It.”

Tyler heard several half-hearted groans from the other students at the mention of the course name and learning, but Mrs. Thompson simply opted to ignore them and continued speaking.  
“I see that you all have taken the liberty of choosing your own seating placements, but unfortunately I will be now taking that away.” Moans of protest were emitted from the general student body, but Mrs. Thompson retaliated with a roll of her eyes. “Right off the bat, I can see that this won’t work. I’m looking at you two boys in the back, Mr. Dun and Mr. Urie!”

Tyler twisted in his seat to look at the two people she just called out and found himself making eye contact with a boy in the back with bright pink hair. Tyler was very surprised that they even let him dye his hair pink, given how strict the school had been with their uniform. Pink hair boy studied Tyler for a second before winking in a very flirtatious way. Tyler immediately felt a pink tinge rise on his cheeks and turned back around to face the teacher again. Just as he did that, she began rattling off a name Tyler didn’t recognize and pointed at the desk in the far right corner of the front row. A nervous looking student wearing bright pink socks gathered her belongings before trudging across the room and sitting down in her next desk, leaving the student previously sitting there to hold his things awkwardly and wait for his name to be called. She continued all along the front row, continuing to list names that Tyler did not know. 

As she made her way to the second row, she finally recited a name that Tyler recognized: “Tyler Joseph!” she said while pointing to the desk in the second row farthest to the left. Tyler quietly picked up his books and walked over to his desk. This new seat, Tyler couldn’t but help to notice, was significantly closer to the front of the room, making it harder to space out without being noticed, and was the seat in his row that was the farthest from the window. 

Before moving on to the next desk, Mrs. Thompson made eye contact with Tyler and said quietly: “Welcome to Worthington High, Mr. Joseph,” before moving to the desk next to him and declaring: “Joshua Dun!”

Tyler looking to see no other than the pink haired boy making his way across the classroom to sit at the desk next to Tyler’s.

The pink haired boy (that Tyler now knew was named Joshua) made eye contact one again and this time sent a smirk in Tyler’s direction, before turning to face the front of the classroom, the smirk slowly faded off of his features. 

Tyler couldn’t help but stare at the boy next to him, eyes flitting across his face and soaking in his features: dark brown/hazel eyes, a slightly too big nose with a nose ring embedded on his left nostril (Tyler was once again surprised that the school’s dress code allowed for that. At this point Tyler wouldn’t have been particularly surprised to find a tattoo hidden underneath the sleeves of his blazer,) and soft looking pink lips. 

Tyler had known for quite a while that he was attracted to both girls and boys for quite some time now, so the fact that he was suddenly felt a very strong urge to kiss the boy sitting across from his wasn’t very surprising. However, he wasn’t out to anyone except for his friend Jenna (who lived in Portland, Oregon, where Tyler had been last) but he had decided to at least try to suppress his homosexual urges considering the fact that he was now attending a christian school and gay people were very looked down upon. 

That plan was already failing all because of some pink haired punk named Joshua Dun. 

Tyler had a feeling that Chemistry would soon grow to be one of his favorite classes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> feedback is very much appreciated. don't expect updates to happen consistently (or at all really) hope you enjoyed!


	2. Every Earthquake Starts With A Little Shake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tyler meets some new friends and learns the "truth" about the pink haired boy named Joshua Dun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much to the people took the time to read this, leave kudos, and comment on the last chapter, it meants a lot, it really does.   
> once again im still not sure what im doing but i hope this make sense. im trying okay.  
> ~  
> chapter title is from citizens of earth by neck deep

Tyler clutched his plastic tray loaded with a crusty slice of pizza and grapes in hand as he walked out of the lunch line and into the main cafeteria, eyes rapidly darting across the room, desperately searching for a place to sit.

After the brief incident with Joshua The Pink Haired Boy (as Tyler liked to refer to him as) the rest of the hour assigned to Chemistry had gone rather smoothly; the only noteworthy thing that happened was that Mrs. Thompson handed out a copy of the syllabus and a safety form that Tyler has to get his parents to sign and return tomorrow. Third period (Spanish) had also gone by without incident. Tyler’s teacher, Señora Garcia had appeared nice enough (and she was also his homeroom teacher which allowed him to kiss up to her more,) and Tyler had always enjoyed Spanish in the past, so he was rather sure that he would do just fine in that class.

But no matter how well his first three periods had gone, that didn’t compensate for the utter horror of lunch on your first day in a new school.

Sometimes Tyler got lucky and had a “buddy” assigned to him by one of the teachers who was essentially forced to sit with Tyler, for the first day at least, which gave Tyler some time to find other friends that he would rather be sitting with anyway. 

Unfortunately, this time Tyler had not been assigned a buddy and he was stuck trying to find someone who appeared friendly enough to let him sit at their lunch table and hopefully accept him into their friend group. You would have thought that Tyler would be an expert at making friends by now with all of the moving, but honestly, almost nothing had changed on that front since sixth grade when he moved to Vermont. 

Someone must have noticed his silent but painfully obvious pleas for help, and Tyler found himself being ushered towards the right corner of the room by a rather short boy with strawberry blonde hair. Tyler recognized him from English and homeroom but couldn’t remember his name. He thought about asking but before he could they approached the table.

Tyler stood by the side of it somewhat awkwardly for a moment before the boy with strawberry blonde hair intervened: “Hey, it’s Tyler right?” Tyler nodded shallowly, eyes still slightly bugged out because of anxiety. Patrick gave him a patient smile before gesturing to the empty seat to his left, “Hey man, it’s cool. You can sit next to me.”

Tyler nodded again out of gratitude and sat down, sitting up unnaturally straight, still feeling incredibly on edge. 

After shifting around for a few moments Tyler looked up and began surveying the other people sitting at the table, which the boy next to him took as a cue to introduce everyone.

“Everyone, this is Tyler, he’s new this year,” the boy said while gesturing towards Tyler, “that’s Ryan—“ he said pointing to a skinny boy on the taller side with an unruly mop of brown hair, “that’s Hayley—“ pointing to a girl with bright orange hair and a permanent smile, “that’s Frank—“ pointing to a short boy with a pale complexion and angular features, “and that’s Mark—“ pointing to a boy slightly on the chubbier side (at least compared to the tiny frames of Frank, Hayley, and Ryan) and dirty blonde hair, “oh yeah, and my name is Patrick, in case you forgot.”

Tyler mumbled a quiet “thank you” to Patrick and waved awkwardly. Mark and Hayley waved back, Hayley rather enthusiastically whereas Mark looked somewhat bored.

Everyone around him began eating their food, and Tyler was about to as well, but before he could even pick up his greasy slice of pepperoni pizza, Hayley began bombarding him with questions: “So Tyler, what brings you to Worthington High? How are you liking things so far? Where did you live before here? Do you have any siblings? Are they mean? Do they—“

Hayley was speaking in such a rapid manner that Tyler couldn’t fit in an answer so his mouth was held open awkwardly while Hayley continued to speak endlessly.

Thankfully, Frank seemed to notice Tyler’s failed attempts at trying to answer her and cut her off for him: “Hayley, how do you expect him to answer any of your questions when you don’t give him anytime to respond? Stop talking so damn fast all the time!”

Hayley abruptly stopped and closed her mouth so violently fast that you could hear her two rows of teeth clack against each other.

“Um, I um uh” Tyler articulated rather well, “I- er- well, my dad moves around quite a lot for his job and he got assigned Columbus and er- my parents are kind of religious so they decided to send my siblings and I here instead of public school.” Tyler stopped at looked at Hayley expectantly, to which she responded by sending a nod of encouragement to continue. “Um, so far Worthington seems to be pretty good so far. The only thing that has happened already is that Joshua Dun—“

Before Tyler could finish his sentence a collective gasp erupted from everyone sitting at the table.

“Josh Dun is bad news dude,” Ryan said with a grimace, “he’s friends with all of the popular assholes, he’s the all-star quarterback that everyone seems to adore him, _and_ he’s the biggest flirt in school. Rumor has it that he’s either kissed or fucked every girl in school—“ Hayley sent a death glare at Ryan, and he quickly corrected himself, “except for Hayley, of course,” Ryan looked around nervously to make sure that no one else was paying attention before leaning in and practically whispering into Tyler’s ear, “and some people even say that he’s fucked some guys too.”

Tyler wasn’t really sure how to process that information, because on the one hand, he was relieved that the guy he had already started to crush on was at least bi so Tyler had some sort of chance with him, but on the other hand, the way that Ryan had phrased that and how when he said that Josh had been with guys, it instantly seemed to make everyone uncomfortable. Unfortunately, it seemed as though Tyler’s thoughts about homosexuality in Christian schools appeared to be accurate, which was definitely not a good thing, for Tyler’s sake at least. And even if it seemed like people were okay with lgbtq+ people, learning that Josh was a known flirt wasn’t exactly the best thing to hear when you have a budding crush on someone. But at least Tyler knew now not to expect much from Josh other than a quick fuck as a one time thing that is never to be spoken off again. In case it was not already obvious, Tyler was a super-virgin so naturally the thought of losing his virginity to a possible one night stand was not nearly as nice of a thought as losing your virginity to a possible partner. 

“Thanks for the info man,” Tyler said to Ryan, trying really hard to not see affected by the news that Josh was a bit of a slut get to him, “I was just wondering what his deal was, I mean he’s in my Chemistry class and he sits next to me. And he made really strange eye contact with me and I was just wondering why? If any of you might know that is.”

Before anyone could answer, the sound of a microphone being turned on a tapped repeatedly to make sure that it’s working shot through the various speakers placed strategically around the cafeteria. 

“Hello Worthington High Juniors!” Shouted a man wearing a polo shirt and dress pants from the front of the cafeteria into a microphone. “My name is Mr. Eddish, and for those of you who do not know, I am the P.E. teacher for the Juniors and Seniors as well as the Varsity Football coach,” some whoops of agreement sounded from what Tyler assumed to be the “popular kid’s table,” Mr. Eddish waited for a few moments for everyone to be quiet again before continuing, “and everyday during lunch for you guys I will dismiss you to recess. If you do not wish to go outside you can remain here in a cafeteria and talk. There are three options for recess that you can go to, and it will change everyday depending on the weather and if anything else important is happening. As it is the first day of school and we want to give you a taste as to what special privileges you are given as a Junior, all three are open today! The first option is to go to the field where the right half will be having a game of soccer, and on the left there will be a game of Ultimate Frisbee. The second option is to go the tennis/basketball courts around the back of the school. There should be a cart full of balls and rackets for both sports, if they’re not there for whatever reason, come find me and I’ll wheel them out from the gym storage room for ya. And the third and final option is to the library to read a book, work on some schoolwork, or use one of the computers there. That’s all for right now, and you guys are dismissed.”

As soon as Mr. Eddish stopped speaking, there was a scramble of people going in various directions, which resulted in the majority of the cafeteria being emptied in the space of three minutes.

While that was happening, Tyler looked to the other people at his table to see if any of them would get up, and when no one did, he decided to remain behind as well for what he presumed to be the second half of the time allotted to them for lunch/recess.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope that was good. once again feedback is very much welcomed. i haven't had a lot of time to think of a proper plot for this yet as i just moved across the ocean and am dealing with a lot of general moving stuff as well as new stuff stuff. so if you guys have any ideas for plot in this, suggestions would be fantastic  
> ~  
>  _have a nice day! stay alive, it's worth it, i promise |-/_


	3. Caught Up In The Moment, But Not In The Right Way

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some backstory for J + his pov during the events in chaper one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> once again, thank you _sososo_ for all of your kudos and nice comments. sorry for the delay in updating, i had some serious writers block. also, i start school tomorrow so updates should be even more sparse. sorry :(  
>  ~  
> chapter title is from poppin' champagne by all time low

Josh Dun wasn’t as cool as everyone seemed to think he was. 

Sure, he was the “star” american football quarterback and had girls fawning over him constantly, but that didn’t he enjoyed the constant attention from his peers. 

See, Josh had a dirty secret that _no one_ could ever know about.

Josh Dun was a raging homo.

Josh was the gayest person that he knew, which wasn’t much of a feat considering he went to a _very_ conservative Christian school, where even being out as gay (or simply not straight) could get you ostracized. And that was precisely why Josh kept that part of himself far away from the part of him that was on display for the school.

The only place he could be openly gay was the internet, where many other queer kids just like him could truly express themselves. Josh had even made some from friends from his pretty consistent blogging about how gay he was. The main one being a girl named Debby who lived in Idaho and was from a very conservative Jewish family who didn’t even let her wear pants. Josh was secretly surprised that they even let her have a computer, much less unmonitored access to the internet.

None of the less, Josh was very happy that he had found someone like Debby who he could truly talk to and _trust_ , which was a trait that many people at his school seemed to forget existed. Josh’s “best friend” was a guy named Pete with black hair that stuck up straight no matter what he did to he and was coincidentally also on the american football team (he was a linebacker.) Pete was the type of guy who was as traditionally masculine as possible. Pete was the physical embodiment of the high school football playing jock stereotype that you saw in all of the teen movies. It seemed as though the only things that he thought were even worth thinking or talking about were how many chicks he had banged at the last large scale party that had been thrown, or how stupid the latest poor kid he has decided to bully relentlessly this time was. Josh couldn’t stand the guy, but he pretty much had to in order to maintain the image he had going for him.

There were only two things that Josh had ever done that were not safely acceptable. The first was getting his nose pierced. Ever since the week before sophomore year had begun, Josh has been sporting a silver-colored nose ring in his right nostril. No one had really mentioned it other than casual compliments from the other guys on the football team saying that it made him look “badass,” or when girls would openly state how attractive he was in front of him in the hopes of getting him to give them attention. It never worked, much to the girl's’ dismay. The second thing was to dye his hair pink.

Dying his hair has been a much more risky decision. Maybe if he had dyed his hair some “badass” color like pitch-black or bright red it would have been different. The reception would have most likely been like the reception his nose ring has received, casual compliments and attempts to swoon him. 

But instead of dying his hair a more safe color, Josh had decided to dive right into the deep end and go pink. No one had really talked to him about it, but he did receive a lot of slightly disgusted started from his fellow classmates. Thankfully, no one had decided to bully him about it in fear of being beaten to a pulp by the muscular quarterback. That was extremely luck on Josh’s part because he would never be able to bring himself to lay a hand on someone outside of the american football field so he wasn’t really sure what he would have done when faced with the situation to stand up for himself. The day never came and Josh couldn’t be more thankful for his invincible image. 

And in case you hadn’t already been able to tell, Josh had done an incredible job at appearing straight, which is why it was a major problem when the one and only “new kid” Tyler Joseph walked into second period Chemistry because Josh simply wasn’t able to prevent his jaw from dropping. 

The boy was simply _gorgeous_. High cheek bones, olive toned skin, lanky yet slightly built frame, and dark brown hair that _perfectly_ matched his eyes. _Oh god_ , his eyes. They were like pools of melting chocolate; Josh could stare at them all day without getting bored.

Unfortunately Josh’s other super straight asshole of a friend Brendon was sitting next to him, and _of course_ he noticed Josh staring at the new kid, who just so happened to be the prettiest boy Josh had seen in a very long time. Brendon shoved Josh in the shoulder to get his attention and gave him a “what the fuck dude” expression. Josh somehow managed to scoff in the new boy’s direction and say something about how stupid he looked, which seemed to appease Brendon. 

Josh (as silently as possible) sighed of relief. That had been a close one. The entire school was obsessed with the idea that Josh had sex with every (hot, mind you) girl that walked, where that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Josh had sex with a girl once when he drunk at some party sophomore year and he absolutely hated it, it just felt so _wrong_ and Josh couldn’t explain why. That experience was one of the main ones that allowed Josh to realize that he was pretty freaking gay. There were already rumors that had done the do with a guy, which were unfortunately true. The guy had been nice enough, but the mediocre sex when drunk wasn’t nearly worth the rumors at school that quickly spread about it. Thankfully, no one seemed to really believe those rumors because "their star quarterback couldn’t ever be gay!” If only they knew the truth.

While Josh and Brendon were talking about the new boy, the teacher had appeared to have heard them and shouted rather loudly from the front of the classroom, “Right off the bat, I can see that this won’t work. I’m looking at you two boys in the back, Mr. Dun and Mr. Urie!”

Josh and Brendon immediately straightened up as the entire room turned to look at them. Josh had been so lost in his thoughts that he had not heard what the teacher had said beforehand, but he assumed it couldn’t be anything positive.

Josh had heard tell of this teacher before from some of his teammates. Apparently Mrs. Thompson was notorious for being overly strict and loud. Unfortunately, both of those things appeared to be true. 

Considering the fact that (almost) the entire class was staring in his direction, Josh decided that this would be a good time to evaluate the people in his room and make a judgement call based off of that scan of how good of a class this would be. As his eyes were drifting across the the faces of his classmates, Josh made eye contact with the new boy from across the room and let the beauty of his face sink in before realizing that he probably looked really creepy, and decided to wink at him, because that obviously would make him appear less creepy. Despite Josh’s incredibly flawed logic, seeing the pastel pink blush that spread across the new boy’s face made the wink completely worth it, even though he was getting weird looks from Brendon again. 

Josh barely registered his teacher’s actions as she began to assign seats to students in the front row. Josh zoned out slightly as she rattled off way familiar names. It was only when she said a name Josh didn’t recognize that he allowed his eyes to come back into focus. 

“Tyler Joseph!” Mrs. Thompson said, standing in front of a desk in a second row. Josh looked around to see who belonged to that name. He wasn’t too surprised when he found out it was the new pretty boy’s, watching him nervously gather up his stuff and shuffle across the room and sit down in his new desk. Tyler, Josh thought, it suited him. Tyler a very cute name for a very cute boy, Josh decided. Josh prayed that his name would be called next so that he could sit next to the pretty boy named Tyler.

When he heard a familiar “Joshua Dun” sound across the classroom, Josh immediately felt a slight smirk grow on his face as he quickly walked to the front of the classroom to sit in the desk next to Tyler’s. 

As he was pulling out his chair and sitting down, he made eye contact with the boy sitting next to him and his smirk only grew at the look of disbelief on Tyler’s face as he took Josh in.

Josh somehow managed to pry his eyes off of Tyler’s before looking at the whiteboard at the front of the room, the smirk slowly melting off of his face. 

Josh already knew he was going to have a lot of fun in this class.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always, comments and suggestions are very much appreciated. i honesly have no plans for this story so suggestions for plot would be awesome :)  
> ~  
>  _have a nice day! stay alive, it's worth it, i promise |-/_


	4. Set My World Ablaze, Watch Me Burn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm sorry for a slightly shorter chapter, and your ongoing support baffles me. thank you so much! :)  
> ~  
> chapter title is from hospital for souls by bring me the horizon

As September was drawing to a close, marking the one month mark of school beginning, Tyler was starting to settle into his schedule at Worthington High School.

Things were going rather well for the brunette boy, he had managed to make good friends with all of the people he sat with during lunch with on the first day of school, and thankfully, at least one of them was in each of his classes (except for Chemistry) so he had someone to work with on group stuff with and just generally not feel lonely.

After school activities had also started up the week prior, and as expected Tyler’s father had essentially forced him to sign up for the school’s basketball team. Tyler had been pushed into playing basketball since he was five by his parents in the hopes of earning a sports scholarship for university. Tyler didn’t really mind being forced into basketball no matter which school he went to, it gave him something to do, and sometimes he even made good friends with his teammates; unfortunately the possibility of Tyler being good friends with his teammates started to decrease as he got older and all of the sports teams began dominated by jocks who shared no interests with Tyler other than basketball. The people Tyler tended to befriend were the more quiet nerds, who in turn flocked to the more nerdy activities, such as marching band or Math Counts. Tyler might have also been a part of those activities if all of his time wasn’t taken up by basketball, but Tyler didn’t really care. Basketball was interesting enough.

Ever since Tyler was eight, his parents had made him do a certain amount of baskets after school and before dinner. If he didn’t complete the number assigned to him, he was sent to his bedroom with only five saltine crackers and a glass of water for dinner instead of being able to eat with the rest of his family. When it first began, Tyler only had to complete 50 baskets but it gradually increased over the years as his “training” became more and more intense. In Oregon (where the Josephs had lived previously) the number had been 500, and it had been that number since five months before Tyler turned fifteen. However, upon arriving in Columbus, Tyler’s parents had made the decision to shorten his mandatory baskets from 500 to only 250. They had said something about how “his responsibilities as a Junior in high school had dramatically increased from those from being a sophomore and Tyler deserved more time to cater to those responsibilities.” Tyler knew that was bullshit, but he didn’t question it, the less baskets, the better. 

Tyler was slightly disappointed to see that Joshua the pink haired boy has not shown up for the first day of basketball tryouts, but then he remembered Ryan had said something about him being the star of the american football team. Tyler supposed that Joshua’s football schedule was probably so hectic that there was no way he could also fit in basketball. Or maybe Joshua just didn’t like basketball; Tyler had no way of knowing.

Tyler had been secretly hoping that Joshua would make the team (or at least show up for tryouts) because a) it gave him an excuse to hang out and talk to the pink haired boy and b) because Tyler would be able to impress him with his _insane_ basketball skills. Tyler was so good at basketball that at his old school he had easily made varsity in his _freshman year_. Granted, Tyler spent the majority of his time on the bench during games because after all, he was only a freshman, but it still was an impressive feat. 

The loud, shrill bell dragged Tyler out of his dream dream, signaling the end of fifth period. Tyler hurriedly checked the board to see if there was a homework assignment, saw nothing was written down (thankfully,) and gathered his stuff before rushing out of the room and heading towards his sixth period class. Because it was a Wednesday, Tyler had P.E. during sixth period. Tyler weaved through the crowds that had gathered in the hallways to get his locker and replace his math books for his bag containing his P.E.uniform. Tyler then proceeded to sprint across the school to make it to the gym in time as his locker was on the complete opposite side of the school.

Tyler didn’t share the same burning hatred for P.E. that his friends did as he was decently fit from all of the basketball he played. He could run a mile without breaking too much of a sweat and could successfully bump a volleyball to one of his teammates without it flying to the complete opposite side of the gym. In fact, he was somewhat decent at all sports, the with the exception of basketball, which of course he was incredible at. 

No, it wasn’t the athletics themselves that posed Tyler’s problem with P.E., it was Joshua Dun. 

See, Joshua Dun, the beautiful boy with pink hair was in Tyler’s P.E. class, and of course having an extremely hot classmate posed a rather large distraction to the brunette who was suddenly very aware he was bisexual. 

And the reason that Josh was significantly more distracting in P.E. as opposed to Chemistry was the uniform. In P.E. Tyler got to see Joshua in a t-shirt and basketball shorts which perfectly showed off Joshua’s toned arm muscles and sometimes allowed Tyler a rather nice view of his butt. And also every once in awhile Tyler would look over to see Joshua covered in sweat, and the very sight of the shiny liquid dripping down his face and beautifully toned muscles left Tyler to have to hastily attempt to subdue his dick.

And because of all this, Tyler often found himself staring at Joshua in between activities, which got two responses. If Joshua himself caught Tyler staring, he would either begin doing over the top stretches that perfectly showed off his muscles, or simply wink at the brunette before turning to his assholes of friends, whereas if Ryan (who was also in Tyler’s P.E. class) caught him, he would give Tyler weird looks to which Tyler would mumble something about he was studying the trees or how pretty the sky was today. Thankfully, none of Joshua’s homophobic assholes of friends ever caught him, because Tyler was sure that if they did, it would not end well. 

Unfortunately that and some prolonged glances during Chemistry was the extent of Joshua’s and Tyler’s interactions. Tyler could only hope for more in the future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always, comments and suggestions are very much appreciated.  
>  _have a nice day! and don't forget to stay alive friend, it's worth it, i promise |-/_


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